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Innovations in cybersecurity have been making headlines in the past decade due to the increased reliance on technology and the inevitable breaches that come alongside such advancements.
In 2015 alone, cybercrime costs increased by 19% worldwide, increasing the overall losses companies accrue due to cybersecurity issues, to a staggering $65 million. The losses are not just accrued by companies; a single computer virus in 2004 was responsible for damages of over $38 billion worldwide. In the United States alone, the total cost of cyber security related crimes is steadily increasing, rising from $11.56 million in 2013 to $15.42 in 2015, and 2016 is expected to exceed that further.
For enterprises, regardless of what industry they are operating in, it means that they need to increase their investment in thwarting cybersecurity threats before it becomes too late. The problem for enterprises is that developing new cybersecurity innovation requires time, manpower, funds and a new way of approaching the cybersecurity problem.
While enterprises seldom lack the time, manpower or funds, they often lack the ability to creatively tackle existing problems. The result is an increased reliance on startups in the field of cybersecurity.
That alone however is not sufficient. For enterprises simply finding the right solution is not enough – they must find the solution that meets their exact demands, then quickly and securely test it within their existing ecosystem otherwise they risk not being able to properly and immediately scale the solution up to their clients and consumers at the mass market level.
The problem here lies, ironically, in the security of these enterprises and their difficulty granting third party access to startups. Thankfully, a new game-changing PoC-as-a-Service platform was recently launched by prooV to speed up the PoC process in a way that eliminates the enterprise’s pain.
Scaling Up When Money is Dwindling
Despite the fact that cybersecurity crimes are on the rise and enterprises need new innovations in cyber security more than ever, startups in the cybersecurity world have reported dwindling funds being invested in new innovations.
The reason? The groundbreaking and promising cybersecurity innovations just aren’t delivering or scaling according to plan. Over $3.3 billion has been invested in 229 cybersecurity startups, with few having a viable and scalable product to show for it at the end of the day.
Many startups that previously raised large amounts of money are finding themselves unable to secure a second round of investment, or are spending double the time to secure deals for future funding. All signs continue to point to the disappointment of investors and the lack of bottom-line products to show for the amount of money invested.
Startups hoping to succeed in the cybersecurity world must therefore shift the way their startup is built, keeping in mind the scalability factor from the beginning.
How Startups Can Prove Scalability
A key way to prove scalability is to test new technology in the infrastructure of an enterprise from which scaling up will be seamless from the enterprises perspective.
The problem however is that enterprises are wary to open up their security systems to enable these cybersecurity startups to test their product on their ecosystem. The catch 22 result of this stagnation means that enterprises don’t want to let startups test their technology before knowing if it can be scaled, and startups have no way to prove scalability to enterprises before testing it on an enterprise level ecosystem.
Today, startups in the field of cybersecurity are able to bypass the regulatory red tape of enterprises thanks to the secure and simple prooV platform. In minutes, rather than months, startups are able to access dozens of enterprises in their industry and pilot their product on the infrastructure of the enterprise without the long approval process.
ProoV is able to do this thanks to the development of an advanced technological platform that requires a one-time integration from the enterprises part on their secure cloud network. From that point onward, any startup can access the testing environment and launch their PoC within minutes.
The benefit of the pilot-as-a-service solution is that startups no longer have to spend time searching for decision makers in enterprises only to encounter IT and integration problems or discover their product does not meet the demands of the enterprise.
PoCs done on the secure prooV remote servers don’t just prove their applicability, but also their scalability due to their integration with the enterprise’s ecosystem. A successful PoC alongside a proven ability to scale a cybersecurity solution will mean an increased chance of funding and use of a new technology in a shorter period of time.
